Across the Zodiac eBook

It was an hour before Eveena seemed in a condition
to be removed, and perhaps I was not very urgent to
hurry her away. I had done no more than any man,
the lowest and meanest on Earth, must have done under
the circumstances. I can scarcely enter into the
feelings of the fellow-man who, in my position, could
have recognised a choice but between saving and perishing
with the helpless creature entrusted to his charge.
But hereditary disbelief in any power above the physical
forces of Nature, in any law higher than that of man’s
own making, has rendered human nature in Mars something
utterly different from, perhaps, hardly intelligible
to, the human nature of a planet forty million miles
nearer the Sun. Though brought up in an affectionate
home, Eveena shared the ideas of the world in which
she was born; and so far accepted its standards of
opinion and action as natural if not right, that the
risk I had run, the effort I had made to save her,
seemed to her scarcely less extraordinary than it had
appeared to the Zampta. She rated its devotion
and generosity as highly as he appreciated its extravagance
and folly; and if he counted me a madman, she was
disposed to elevate me into a hero or a demi-god.
The tones and looks of a maiden in such a temper,
however perfect her maidenly reserve, would, I fancy,
be very agreeable to men older than I was, either
in constitution or even in experience. I doubt
whether any man under fifty would have been more anxious
than myself to cut short our period of repose, broken
as it was, when I refused to listen to her tearful
penitence and self-reproach, by occasional words and
looks of gratitude and admiration. I did, however,
remember that it was expedient to refasten the window,
and re-attach the seals, before departing. At
the end of the hour’s rest I allowed my charge
and myself, I had recovered more or less completely
the nervous force which had been for a while utterly
exhausted, less by the effort than by the terror that
preceded it. I was neither surprised, nor perhaps
as much grieved as I should have been, to find that
Eveena could hardly walk; and felt to the full the
value of those novel conditions which enabled me to
carry her the more easily in my arms, though much
oppressed even by so slight an effort in that thin
air, to the place where we had left our carriage—­no
inconsiderable distance by the path we had to pursue.
Before starting on our return I had, in despite of
her most earnest entreaties, managed to recover her
head-dress and veil, at a risk which, under other
circumstances, I might not have cared to encounter.
But had she been seen without it on our return, the
comments of the whole neighbourhood would have been
such as might have disturbed even her father’s
cool indifference. We reached her home in safety,
and with little notice, having, of course, drawn the
canopy around us as completely as possible. I
was pleased to find that only her younger sister,
to whose care I at once committed her, was there at
present, the elders not having yet returned. I
took care to detach from the bird’s neck the
tablet which had served its purpose so well.
The creature had found his way home within half-an-hour
after I dismissed him, and had frightened Zevle [Stella]
not a little; though the message, which a fatal result
would have made sufficiently intelligible to Esmo,
utterly escaped her comprehension.